Based in Taiwan, Stan Lai is widely recognized as the most prominent living playwright in the Chinese language. In a creative career spanning three decades, Lai has written some of the most significant contemporary plays in East Asia, while pioneering new modes of expression for the Chinese stage.
Lai’s unusual background has given him a unique ability to synthesize Eastern and Western philosophies and artistic styles. He was born in 1954, in Washington, D.C., where his father, a refugee from China after the civil war, was serving in the Republic of China’s foreign service. Lai moved back to Taiwan with his family when he was 12.
During university, he studied English literature and spent his free time playing music and sharing democratic ideas in a café that was an underground cultural center of Taiwan during the restrictive years under martial law. This experience made Lai want to pursue a career in the arts. Eventually, he attended the doctoral program in Dramatic Art at the University of California, Berkeley. After receiving his PhD in 1983, Stan Lai returned to Taiwan. There, he taught in the newly founded National Institute of the Arts and established a new theatre company, Performance Workshop, in 1984.
Lai has written 32 performed plays, including Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, which arguably is his most famous; The Village, which The Beijing News called “the pinnacle of our era of theatre”; That Evening, We Performed Crosstalk, which practically single-handedly revived a dying performing art of stand-up comedy, called “crosstalk”; and his eight-hour masterpiece A Dream Like a Dream, which China Daily called “perhaps the most important milestone in the history of Chinese theatre.”
Lai has twice received Taiwan’s highest award for the arts, the National Arts Award. His plays have toured through Chinese-speaking countries and his films have won international awards in Berlin, Tokyo and Singapore. In 2010, Newsweek China chose him as Man of the Year in the field of Culture. In 2011, he received the Grand Cordon, Order of Brilliant Star from the Presidential Office, one of the highest civilian decorations in Taiwan.
Lai’s unusual background has given him a unique ability to synthesize Eastern and Western philosophies and artistic styles. He was born in 1954, in Washington, D.C., where his father, a refugee from China after the civil war, was serving in the Republic of China’s foreign service. Lai moved back to Taiwan with his family when he was 12.
During university, he studied English literature and spent his free time playing music and sharing democratic ideas in a café that was an underground cultural center of Taiwan during the restrictive years under martial law. This experience made Lai want to pursue a career in the arts. Eventually, he attended the doctoral program in Dramatic Art at the University of California, Berkeley. After receiving his PhD in 1983, Stan Lai returned to Taiwan. There, he taught in the newly founded National Institute of the Arts and established a new theatre company, Performance Workshop, in 1984.
Lai has written 32 performed plays, including Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, which arguably is his most famous; The Village, which The Beijing News called “the pinnacle of our era of theatre”; That Evening, We Performed Crosstalk, which practically single-handedly revived a dying performing art of stand-up comedy, called “crosstalk”; and his eight-hour masterpiece A Dream Like a Dream, which China Daily called “perhaps the most important milestone in the history of Chinese theatre.”
Lai has twice received Taiwan’s highest award for the arts, the National Arts Award. His plays have toured through Chinese-speaking countries and his films have won international awards in Berlin, Tokyo and Singapore. In 2010, Newsweek China chose him as Man of the Year in the field of Culture. In 2011, he received the Grand Cordon, Order of Brilliant Star from the Presidential Office, one of the highest civilian decorations in Taiwan.